Edwin van der Sar surprised listeners when, in a light-hearted video interview, he declared Louis van Gaal the best manager he ever played under. The comment prompted a visible reaction from Gary Neville, who expected the former Manchester United goalkeeper to pick Sir Alex Ferguson.<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old was quizzed on a range of informal topics, from his favorite movie, which was not revealed, to an all-time Dutch five-a-side. Van der Sar singled out ex-PSV striker Rom\u00e1rio as the trickiest opponent he faced.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most discussed moment came when Neville pressed Van der Sar over managerial preference. Van der Sar spent six years at Man Utd while Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge, yet he placed his former Ajax manager above the Scot. Neville, who had assumed Van der Sar would select Ferguson, appeared stunned by the choice. The nature of the video limited extended explanation and Van der Sar \u201crefusing to blink, quite literally, when Neville pushed back by bringing up Ferguson.\u201d There wasn\u2019t much of an explanation, but Van der Sar\u2019s bullishness about his former Ajax manager is long-standing.<\/p>\n
In an earlier interview in 2014 with the Daily Mirror Van der Sar made the same point: “Louis van Gaal is the best manager I have ever played for.” That professional loyalty traces back to 1990, when Van Gaal handed Van der Sar his senior Ajax debut. The goalkeeper was a key figure in Van Gaal\u2019s youthful Ajax side that claimed Champions League glory in 1995, beating Fabio Capello\u2019s AC Milan 1\u20130 in the final thanks to a Patrick Kluivert goal.<\/p>\n
The exchange underlined the different perspectives players hold on managerial influence. For Van der Sar, formative experiences at Ajax under Van Gaal remain decisive, even when set against his successful spell at Man Utd under Sir Alex Ferguson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van der Sar picks Van Gaal over Sir Alex Ferguson, surprising Gary Neville in a short interview. Q&A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-7195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}